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As Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.